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The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the still-waiting-for-mine dept.

azatht writes "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2004 "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction" jointly to David J. Gross, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, H. David Politzer California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, USThe 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Frank Wilczek Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA."

9 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Some quicky info by gowen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Asymptotic freedom in the theory of the Strong Interaction

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  2. Eat my Karma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    BBC Article

  3. I need to catch up on my physics by FLOOBYDUST · · Score: 5, Informative

    It always amazes me how little I know when I look at what these folks do. http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty /frank_wilczek.html/ Interesting reading.

  4. Re:Coralised link by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Informative

    Umm, mods... That one wasn't coralized...

    Try this instead:
    http://nobelprize.org.nyud.net:8090/physics/laurea tes/2004/press.html

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  5. The Elegant Universe by MonkeyDev · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you want a good description of what Superstrings is all about, read Brian Greene's book "The Elegant Universe". It's about superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory. His book was also made into a PBS special a few months ago. Brian Greene is a master at making these complex issues understandable. And he's fun to watch too. I'm not sure how much pure research he does anymore, but he's probably one of the best things that's ever happened to science because he helps people like me understand what people like him do - and tells us why we should care!

  6. Re:Well . . . by gowen · · Score: 4, Informative
    It accounts for the behavior of three out of nature's four fundamental forces
    Err, no. QCD accounts for one of the fundamental forces, the strong force. Quarks (and their asymptotic freedom) don't really have anything to do with the electroweak forces, which are carried by W and Z bosons and photons.
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    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  7. Re:Begone, ye troll! by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Informative

    Einstein never won a Nobel prize for Relativity, he won it for the photoelectric effect.

  8. Re:Well . . . by Pi_0's+don't+shower · · Score: 4, Informative
    This discovery cemented the theory of quantum chromodynamics...
    Not to be too nit-picky, but it's worth mentioning that their work shows that quantum chromodynamics (QCD) accurately describes the strong force only at HIGH energies. The use of asymptotic freedom, or QCD at large energy scales, agrees very well with experiment. However, the theory does not give reliable predictions in the low-energy (sometimes non-perturbative) regime. To say that QCD is now completely understood ignores this problem, which is the most serious problem left (other than the Higgs) in the Standard Model today. Some possible solutions to the low-energy QCD problem (or the confinement problem) are the people working on Lattice QCD and the people working on the B-T worldsheet formalism. Sorry for the deluge of information, but I thought it was worth pointing out that there is still plenty of work to be done in understanding this theory. And as an interesting aside, even with these three brilliant men and their work, theoretical calculations only agree with experiment to about a 10% level!
  9. Re:Where will this take us ? by Theory+of+Everything · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is it some 100% theoretical stuff or will it have technical repercussions in the short term ?

    I just attended Frank Wilczek's press conference. He was asked this very question. His answer, in short, was "No." In medium, "The are no real-world applications I can think of." In long, "Maybe, someday, it could benefit nuclear power production because we better understand the nucleus. And there are side-benefits: the WWW was developed at CERN, and young people are inspired to science-related careers."